Bilingual (album)

Bilingual is the sixth studio album by English synth-pop duo Pet Shop Boys, released in the United Kingdom on 2 September 1996 by Parlophone and in the United States on 10 September 1996 by Atlantic Records. The album reached number four on the UK Albums Chart, lower than their previous five studio albums which had all reached the top three. It yielded four successful singles, with three of them—"Before", "Se a vida é (That's the Way Life Is)" and "A Red Letter Day"—reaching the UK top 10; the fourth one, the English/Spanish-language composition "Single-Bilingual", peaked within the top 20.

Background and recording

Bilingual continues the heavily instrumented arrangements and backing vocals Pet Shop Boys began adding to their music with the album Very (1993). As the title suggests, a number of the songs on Bilingual have international influences. On their 1994 Discovery Tour in South America, the duo were influenced by the beats and rhythms associated with Latin American music. Initially, the whole album was intended to have a Latin American sound, but the concept was not fully realised.

Three songs have bilingual lyrics, mixing English with Spanish on "Discoteca" and "Single-Bilingual" and with Portuguese on "Se a vida é", which was based on a song by the Brazilian group Olodum. "It Always Comes as a Surprise" opens with a sample of Brazilian singer Astrud Gilberto and features percussion sounds from a berimbau and cuícas. Neil Tennant described four of the songs—"Metamorphosis", "Electricity", "Before", and "Saturday Night Forever"—as a "New York dance album" within the album.

In August 1994, Pet Shop Boys started writing songs for the album, including "Discoteca", at Unique Studios, where they had originally recorded "West End Girls". For the album, they worked with the Scottish women's drumming ensemble SheBoom, who specialised in samba rhythms,

Recording began in April 1995 and continued on and off into the following year.

Bilingual was positioned as one of Atlantic's top releases for the fourth quarter of 1996, with an aggressive pricing strategy. The label set up a Pet Shop Boys site on the World Wide Web, where at least five fansites had been created by that time. The marketing campaign was intended to encourage participation from the duo, who had "a reputation for being difficult, to the extent of barely helping to promote their releases", according to the music trade magazine Billboard. Tennant gave interviews to publications including Q magazine The campaign initiated by Parlophone was deliberately designed around the album with minimal promotion by Tennant and Lowe. According to international marketing manager Carol Baxter, Pet Shop Boys were established enough that their participation was not required.

The duo made in-person appearances to support the last two singles from the album. In November 1996, they performed their new release "Single-Bilingual" along with "Se a Vida é", accompanied by SheBoom, on the popular Channel 4 show TFI Friday hosted by Chris Evans. In March 1997, Pet Shop Boys promoted "A Red Letter Day" with the only Top of the Pops studio performance of any single released from Bilingual; the previous singles had been promoted on the hit music show with their music videos. They also appeared on the ITV programme This Morning, hosted by Richard and Judy, for an interview and a preview of the music video. A two-part BBC Radio 1 documentary with the duo titled About the Pet Shop Boys aired in December 1996.

Pet Shop Boys decided to perform a series of concerts at the Savoy Theatre in London in June 1997. As promotion, they released a cover version of "Somewhere" from West Side Story as a single and on a double album, Bilingual: Special Edition, which included the original album and a bonus CD of remixes and B-sides. The single reached the UK top 10, and a performance of "Somewhere" was recorded at the Savoy for Top of the Pops.

Rather than doing a photoshoot of the duo, informal pictures were used for the booklet and inner sleeve. The photos were in duplicate, playing on the "bi" theme. The special edition cover had a double image of the duo taken by Andy Earl. Lyrics were included in the packaging for the first time. The album was certified gold upon release by the British Phonographic Industry, signifying 100,000 units shipped to retailers. It had sold 81,000 copies by June 1997, at the time of their "Somewhere" residency, and by 2017, the sales total had increased to 108,054 copies in the UK.

In the US, where Bilingual peaked at 39 on the Billboard 200, It was co-produced with Danny Tenaglia and featured Barbara Tucker, Carole Sylvan, and Karen Bernod on backing vocals. The title phrase, "Se a vida é", is mistranslated as "that's the way life is" (the actual meaning in Portuguese is "if life is"), but Tennant decided to keep it as is. The song was co-produced with Chris Porter and featured drums by Glasgow group SheBoom. Remixes were done by Mark Picchiotti, Deep Dish and Pink Noise. The B-sides were "Betrayed" and "How I Learned to Hate Rock 'n' Roll". The video for the song featured youthful models frolicking at a water park located in South Florida and was shot by Bruce Weber, who had also directed the music video for the duo's 1990 single "Being Boring". It was released in the US in April 1997 as a double A-side single with "To Step Aside". To promote the package, 13 mixes of "To Step Aside" were commissioned, most of them released promotionally only and unreleased in the UK. "To Step Aside" was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Dance Recording in 1998.

The third single to be released was "Single" in November 1996. It was renamed "Single-Bilingual" as Everything but the Girl had recently released a different song also called "Single". Produced by Pet Shop Boys with drums by SheBoom, the single included remixes of "Single-Bilingual" and a new mix of "Discoteca". The B-sides were "Confidential" (a demo for Tina Turner) and "The Calm Before the Storm". "A Red Letter Day" entered the UK Singles Chart at number nine only to crash out of the top 40 after only one week.

During this era, an additional single not part of the original Bilingual package, "Somewhere", was released to promote the duo's residency at the Savoy Theatre in London and a special edition of Bilingual. For the UK release, B-sides included "Disco Potential" and "The View from Your Balcony".

In late 1996, the song "Up Against It" had radio airplay in Sweden, although it had not been released as a single.

Reissues

In 2001, Pet Shop Boys reissued their first six studio albums; Bilingual was re-released as Bilingual: Further Listening 1995–1997. It was digitally remastered and included a second disc of B-sides and previously unreleased material from around the time of the album's original release. A remastered single-disc edition followed on 9 February 2009, under the title of Bilingual: Remastered, containing only the 12 tracks of the original. In 2018, a newly remastered edition of Bilingual: Further Listening 1995–1997 was released, with the same contents as the 2001 edition.

Critical reception

In a 3-star review for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine cited Bilingual as "further proof that even if the Pet Shop Boys aren't gracing the top of the charts as frequently as they did during the late '80s, they are crafting albums that are more adventurous and successful than they did when they were one of the top singles acts in pop music".

J. D. Considine of Spin rated the album 8 out of 10, saying, "Bilingual breaks new ground on tunes like "Se a Vida é", in which the earthy pulse of the percussion beautifully offsets the mannered detachment of Neil Tennant's voice—a new way to play off his usual inside/outside emotional dynamic. Only here, for the first time in eons, he sounds happy. Hopeful, even".

Track listing

Notes:

"It Always Comes as a Surprise" contains a sample of "Corcovado (Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars)", performed by Stan Getz and Astrud Gilberto.
"Metamorphosis" contains the lyric "somebody spoke and I went into a dream", which is taken from The Beatles' song "A Day in the Life".

Special edition (1997)

Remastered edition (2001)

Notes:

"Discoteca" (single version) and "A Red Letter Day" (expanded single version) were previously unreleased.
"The Boy Who Couldn't Keep His Clothes On" (Danny Tenaglia international club mix) and "Somewhere" (extended mix) are identical to the versions featured on the 1997 reissue.

Personnel

Credits adapted from the liner notes of Bilingual.

Pet Shop Boys

Neil Tennant
Chris Lowe

Additional musicians

Pete Gleadall – programming
SheBoom – drums, percussion ; additional drums, percussion
Robin Jones – additional percussion ; percussion
Davide Giovanni – additional vocals
Joseph De Jesus – additional vocals
Weston Foster – additional vocals
Lino Rocha – additional vocals
Sylvia Mason-James – vocals
Simon Cotsworth – programming
Ritchie Birkett – keyboards
Trevor Henry/Ignorants – scratching, additional keyboards
Kevin Robinson – brass
Bud Beadle – brass
Fayyaz Virji – brass
Mike Innes – brass
Noel Langley – brass
Richard Sidell – brass
Andy Hamilton – brass ; saxophone
J.J. Belle – guitar
Chris Cameron – additional keyboards ; string arrangement, string conducting
Hugh Burns – guitar
Katie Kissoon – additional vocals
The Choral Academy of Moscow – choir
Victor Popov – choir direction
Graeme Perkins – choir coordination
Alyosha Zolotukhin – choir arrangement
Barbara Tucker – additional vocals
Karen Bernod – additional vocals
Carole Sylvan – additional vocals
Johnny Marr – guitar, additional vocals
Greg Bone – guitar
Andy Duncan – drums, percussion
Danny Tenaglia – drum programming
Louie "Balo" Guzman – drum programming
Peter Daou – keyboards
Phil Pagano – programming
Eddie Montilla – additional keyboards

Technical

Pet Shop Boys – production
Bob Kraushaar – engineering ; mixing
Paul Roberts – production
Andy Williams – production
Simon Cotsworth – engineering
Chris Porter – production, recording ; mixing
Tatyana Vinnitskaya – choir recording
Danny Tenaglia – production
Dana Vlcek – recording, mix engineering
Rob Rives – engineering assistance
Rich Lowe – engineering
Doug DeAngelis – mix engineering
Claire Tonkinson – recording assistance
Andrew Green – recording assistance
Tom Elmhirst – recording assistance

Artwork

Mark Farrow Design – sleeve
Pet Shop Boys – sleeve
Chris Heath – photography
José Cea – photography

Further Listening 1995–1997

Credits adapted from the liner notes of Bilingual: Further Listening 1995–1997.

Additional musicians

Pete Gleadall – programming
Oli Savill – percussion
Lilliana Chacian – percussion
Sylvia Mason-James – additional vocals
SheBoom – drums, percussion
Robin Jones – additional percussion
Katie Kissoon – additional vocals
Davide Giovanni – additional vocals
Joseph De Jesus – additional vocals
Weston Foster – additional vocals
Lino Rocha – additional vocals
Danny Tenaglia – drum programming
Louie "Balo" Guzman – drum programming
Peter Daou – keyboards
Vanessa Ichak – Banji girl vocals
The Choral Academy of Moscow – choir
Victor Popov – choir direction
Graeme Perkins – choir coordination
Alyosha Zolotukhin – choir arrangement
Richard Niles – orchestra arrangement, orchestra conducting

Technical

Pet Shop Boys – production
Bob Kraushaar – engineering ; mixing
Pete Gleadall – engineering
Pete Schwier – engineering, mixing
Danny Tenaglia – production
Doug DeAngelis – mix engineering
Steve Rodway – additional production
Mike "Spike" Drake – mixing
Tatyana Vinnitskaya – choir recording
Throusers Enthusiasts – additional production
Steve Price – orchestra recording
Claire Tonkinson – recording assistance
Andrew Green – recording assistance
Tom Elmhirst – recording assistance
Tim Young – remastering

The sampled lines in "Electricity" were taken from the 1942 film My Gal Sal and were spoken by Rita Hayworth. The film happened to be playing on television while the track was being recorded, and was not publicly identified until 2019.

Charts

Weekly charts

{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center"

|+ Weekly chart performance for Bilingual

! scope="col"| Chart (1996)

! scope="col"| Peak<br/>position

! scope="row"| Danish Albums (Hitlisten)

| 11

! scope="row"| European Albums (Music & Media)

| 10

! scope="row"| Italian Albums (Musica e dischi)

| 22

! scope="row"| Japanese Albums (Oricon)

| 23

! scope="row"| Portuguese Albums (AFP)

| 15

Year-end charts

{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center"

|+ Year-end chart performance for Bilingual